


With The Moonlight Helping Along

by likehandlingroses



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Canon Compliant, Flirting, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25344289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses
Summary: The staff at Downton find Mr. Richard Ellis quite charming, especially as compared to the other members of the royal staff.Thomas isn't so easily convinced.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow & Elsie Hughes, Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 42
Kudos: 147





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just another parallel-to-canon fic! The hook on this one? It has "The Music Man" vibes--not a direct "AU" in that sense, it's very much canon compliant and does NOT take place in Iowa or involve marching bands, but!! I wanted the vibes. It was originally supposed to be three scenes, and it got...out of control...I hope you enjoy! <3

“--but she gets dreams like that all the time.” Mr. Ellis looked out the window (though there wasn’t much view beyond the fog). “Meanwhile, I’ve never had a single one.”

“You’ve never had one because they aren’t real,” Elizabeth said, vague amusement in her voice.

After traveling together for so long, they were running out of things to talk about—not that he’d ever admit to it. He seemed to believe that boredom was a moral failing, and one he was personally responsible for eradicating.

“So you don’t believe people can tell things before they happen?” he challenged her. As if he truly believed his cousin Ida had premonitions...he was a tease, almost a clown, and the only reason people didn’t realize it was because of his bearing. 

“People can guess. Sometimes they guess right,” she said, hands folding in her lap as she prepared for an argument that didn’t matter, but would pass the time until they reached the Abbey. 

“What if they nearly  _ always _ guessed right?” Mr. Ellis pressed. 

“That’s only luck.” 

“Only luck, Miss Lawton?” Mr. Ellis raised his brow. “Now, anyone could pick up a horn and start blowing into it—that’s true enough—but if he started playing a real tune, I’ll wager you’d say he had a talent.”

Though she’d nibbled promisingly on the line, Elizabeth decided not to take the bait. 

They were almost there, anyway. 

“Is this you getting ready for your new audience?” she asked sardonically.

“No, I need far more space to get ready than this,” he replied, straight-faced except for eyes sparkling with amusement. 

She hoped the staff at Downton found him half as entertaining as he found himself...

“You know you don’t have to make a production about everything?”

He made it seem as if he only meant to be friendly, but what sort of friends were people you would nearly forget about by the following week? 

What he wanted was attention, and he was bound to get it, one way or another. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, looking back out the window. 

“What I mean is, just do your job.”

“And you’ll do yours?”

His eyes dropped to her bag, and she looked straight ahead, lifting her chin. 

“Don’t talk as if you don’t approve,” she replied after a pause, in a low voice. “When you’ve made such a study of it.” 

“I don’t approve of it, as a matter of fact,” he protested, probably only for the sake of watching her turn incredulously towards him. He grinned.  _ “But.” _

“But what?” 

“You can’t sell,” he said, hardly above a murmur. 

She couldn’t argue with that, and she refused to be like him and try to anyway. 

“I consider it a gesture of goodwill,” he added. 

“Oh, do you?” she said, almost laughing. “I’ll remember that next time you keep half for yourself.” 

“That’s funny,” he remarked, still looking out the window. The fog was clearing up, putting the grounds of the house well in view. 

“What is?”

He leaned forward for a better look. “That you think I’d only take half.”

* * *

The staff wasn’t pleased with the arrangements—that much was clear. They usually weren’t, though few had appeared as openly dismayed as Lord Grantham’s.

Mr. Wilson was pretending he didn’t notice—or perhaps he really didn’t, he could be awfully obtuse. Anyway, he was leaving to come back with reinforcements. It was Richard and Miss Lawton who’d face the fallout, as usual. 

The best way to manage these things was to find a way in, a friendly face to smooth things over with everyone else...but where to start, when the usual suspects were shooting daggers? 

The butler, strangely enough, looked unbothered, though not in the way Mr. Wilson did. It seemed to Richard that Mr. Barrow was only too happy to have an excuse to not care much about the entire affair. 

He was younger than any butler Richard had met, certainly of a house so large. It showed, more than Mr. Barrow would thank him for noticing, but there was something reassuring in seeing a man his age running the place. After all, the house wasn’t falling to pieces. He managed it well, and surely he was better off without the icy stature most of them exuded. 

He might be a way in, Richard considered, smiling at Mr. Barrow as he offered to show him to his room. 

“That’s kind of you,” he said, testing the waters. 

This seemed to irritate Mr. Barrow, somehow, though he tried to hide it by putting his hands behind his back. 

“Unless you’d rather look for it yourself?” He was almost smiling at his own retort, which Richard found more charming than was reasonable. 

There were other advantages to seeing a man his own age in the house. 

“When you put it that way…” 

Mr. Barrow nodded, gratified by the concession, before turning on his heel. 

He’d do just fine.

* * *

_ Unless he’s ill, then it’s me... _ at least Mr. Ellis seemed to have a sense of humor about it...there were too many people in service who’d never learned the lesson. 

The hall boys were doing their part to ensure Thomas never forgot it. Thomas had no sooner turned the corner than Albert nearly barreled into him. 

“Mr. Barrow, there’s another bird—”

“—in Larry’s room again?” Albert nodded. For his part, Larry was poking his head uselessly out of his bedroom door, looking guilty as anything.

“And what did I say the last time?” Thomas said with a sigh. “Just turn out the light and close the door—”

“—but Mr. Barrow—”

“ —and it’ll fly out aga—” Thomas stopped in his tracks after spying the sparrow hopping along the hall. “Ah.”

He was being punished for something—Thomas only wished he knew what in particular, just so he could guess when it might be over.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Barrow,” Larry’s voice came from down the hall, “but the latch on the window don’t stick.”

As if he was supposed to believe that...Thomas bit the inside of his cheek, feeling an unsettling sense of serenity as he turned from the chirping bird to Larry’s unconvincing wide-eyed disbelief. 

“I thought we fixed that?” he said, blinking. 

“It must’ve broke again.” 

“How did that happen?”

“I dunno, Mr. Barrow.” And to his credit, Larry kept his gaze and his voice steady. It would have been impressive if it hadn’t been the stupidest thing in the world to lie about. The attics got stifling in the summer, and it wasn’t the lad’s fault the bird had taken up just by his window...why not simply call the situation unavoidable and have done with it? 

But Larry was set in his ways, and Thomas supposed that was a part of his penance. Larry would have his own someday, and the world would keep turning. 

In the meantime, there was a bird in the servants’ quarters. An increasingly agitated one, for that matter—it was beginning to learn what a ceiling was, and not liking it one bit. 

Mr. Ellis stepped out of his room. 

“What’s that?” he said, eyes fixed on the sparrow. 

“What’s what?” Thomas said, brow knit in mock confusion as he followed Mr. Ellis’s stare. “Oh, you mean the bird flying about?”

Again, Mr. Ellis cracked a smile at his quip, though it faded quickly as he was forced to duck out of the way. 

“Here—” he said, popping back into his room and coming out with a towel in hand. “Just let it settle…”

When it did, tired of searching for a sky that seemed to have disappeared, Mr. Ellis went to work, putting the creature into a sort-of hammock so deftly that Thomas hardly knew what had happened. He nodded towards his room, and Thomas hurried to the window, opening the latch as if on a timer. 

When Mr. Ellis caught up, the situation didn’t appear nearly so dire—the bird hardly seemed to notice it had been caught. 

“I used to leave my window open as a boy, and I must have had to catch about two dozen of them over the years,” he said in the face of Thomas’s confusion. “They say it’s bad luck, but I haven’t found it to be the case.”

He coaxed the bird out the open window before folding up the towel neatly, watching it fly into the distance. 

“There,” he said, looking at Thomas with a smile. And the window wasn’t terribly wide, for two people to be standing in front of it...

“Well,” Thomas said, looking back at Albert and Larry, who were both standing in the doorway. “Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for your help...and perhaps we can see about that latch?” 

He followed them out, feeling foolish. Of all the ridiculous things...he might’ve been a hall boy again himself, thinking about  _ that _ just because a man smiled at him over a job well done.... 

“Mr. Barrow?” Mr. Ellis had stepped out into the hall again. “It might even be good luck, going by experience.”

Before Thomas could answer—before he could decide what he meant by it—Mr. Wilson’s already too-familiar voice came down the passage. 

“Mr. Ellis?” He advanced on them with a set brow, and Thomas supposed Mr. Ellis had dawdled at his own risk. 

But Mr. Ellis didn’t look at all bothered—he straightened, eyes lighting up as if he’d found something he’d lost. 

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said easily, stepping towards Mr. Wilson, one hand teasing the button on his jacket. “I thought I’d missed you on the stairs.”

Mr. Wilson frowned. “Why on earth would I come up here?” 

Mr. Ellis only blinked, looking bemused, and Mr. Wilson bristled as he realized the absurdity of his own question. “Never mind—now, we’ll have a tighter turn around than at…”

Mr. Ellis followed him down the hall, looking back at Thomas in amusement. 

_ That can only come to trouble,  _ Thomas thought, even as he found it impossible to bite back a smile. 

* * *

Mr. Wilson had insisted they would “handle” all the preparations, but Thomas wasn’t about to tell Lady Mary that. He could choose the silver, if that’s what she wanted, and waste everyone’s time, just so they could come back and say they wouldn’t use most of it. 

Anyway, Albert needed the training. 

“You want more of an even pattern, more—that’s it…” 

“Will they really not let us serve on the night, Mr. Barrow?” Albert asked. He was taking the news particularly hard, as he’d been planning to play footman for the visit. 

“It sounds as if not,” Thomas said, trying not to sound too disinterested. He remembered, after all, how it felt to be passed over, to feel as if nothing were ever going to  _ happen.  _

“I don’t think it’s right,” Albert said, leaning in too hard with his cloth. “What’s the point of traveling to different houses, if they want everything the same as at home?”

He spoke too freely, but that’s how they all did nowadays. Thomas couldn’t bring himself to mind the change. 

Mrs. Hughes—who’d stepped through the doorway in the middle of Albert’s griping—very much  _ did _ (when it came to the maids and hall boys, anyway...griping was earned over time, in her book). 

“They aren’t touring Yorkshire to see us, Albert…” she scolded, though not unkindly. She looked up at Thomas. “Are the plans for tomorrow staying as they are?”

Thomas shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Mr. Wilson can be in charge of his people, when he comes back. But we’re in charge of ours, far as I can tell.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Mrs. Hughes scoffed. “But I have a bad feeling we haven’t heard the last of it. A housekeeper…what could she do here that my maids and I couldn’t manage?”

Albert looked up with a knowing grin that Thomas was only just wise enough not to return. Mrs. Hughes  _ had  _ earned her griping, after all...

“It’s only a few days, Mrs. Hughes,” he said evenly. “Then we’ll be back to normal.”

Her momentary silence conceded his point—she was fair, Mrs. Hughes. Thomas had known it for a long while, but it was clearer all the time now that he was butler. They made a good team, as far as he could tell. 

“They aren’t conversationalists, are they?” she said, changing the subject. “Except for the valet…Mr. Ellis? He seemed friendly.”

“Was he?” he said, only half-interested, moving to correct Albert again. “Make sure it’s a pattern, like I said. ”

“You tell me—you’re the one he was talking to.”

She was staring at him, which Thomas refused to acknowledge.

“He was talking to everyone,” he said, watching Albert closer than ever. “Daisy and Anna had more to say to him than I did.”

“Heaven knows Daisy always has plenty to say…” she sighed, and for a moment that seemed to be the end of it. Then:

“Did you know he’s from here?” she asked, eyes back to watching him. 

She meant well, Thomas guessed (and guessing was the right word, as he never dared ask what she meant by telling him about every bloke that came by the house). But it was puzzling all the same, having her bother about something that most people tried their best to ignore. Something that he himself hardly thought about, most of the time. (For a long time, he hadn’t thought about it  _ at all, _ finding that it ate up too much space and gave nothing in return but grief). 

She meant well, but of course it was always ridiculous and beside the point. Never more so than now, with her talking up a valet who quite plainly liked playing the room. 

“He’s from  _ York,”  _ Thomas corrected. “Lots of people are.”

“Henrietta said he’s—” Albert piped up, stopping himself from finishing the sentence as soon as Mrs. Hughes turned his way. 

“What did Henrietta say?” she said, eyes narrowing.

Albert went pink, lips pursed in a quiet, faltering defiance. Thomas came to his defense. 

“I think we all know what Henrietta said, and we’ve heard it before besides,” he said with a laugh. Then, to appease Mrs. Hughes: “She won’t like you any better for telling tales, Albert.”

“I don’t care if she likes me,” Albert said, rather harshly for someone who certainly spent enough time gossiping with Henrietta in the passage. 

Mrs. Hughes stood to full height. “Now—”

“Albert,” Thomas interrupted. “Why don’t you finish it up and go and check on Andy?”

Mrs. Hughes let the matter drop, deferring to Thomas’s authority. It was one of the nice things about being the butler—Albert thought he’d like a quarrel with Mrs. Hughes because he didn’t know any better, and Thomas had the power to stop him from making such a mistake. 

With that power came the expectation that he’d talk it all over with Mrs. Hughes—that part wasn’t nearly so nice. 

“He’s got a mouth on him,” she said after Albert had slunk out of the room. 

“He doesn’t cause trouble, just talks it sometimes,” Thomas said. “If you ignore it, he’ll feel badly enough on his own.”

“I won’t ask if you speak from experience…” she said with a laugh. Before Thomas could decide whether or not he was bothered by it, Mr. Ellis had poked his head in the doorway. 

“Mrs. Hughes?” he said, as comfortably as if he’d known her for years. He held out a hand without elaborating, revealing a tarnished coin Thomas recognized immediately. 

“One of the maids was looking for it, it was in the passage. Florence, was it?”

Her lucky coin—called such because she’d found it by the sea under a rock and decided that its location had conferred magical properties. She always had it in her pocket...except for when she took it out to tell the story to anyone who would listen.

What were the chances, Thomas wondered, that she’d told the story to a new arrival, a man who was already drawing eyes (according to Albert)? And then to lose it just after...

“Oh, that’s kind of you, Mr. Ellis,” Mrs. Hughes said, entirely taken in. “We were just saying how nice it must be for you, being back at home.”

Though his eyes panned over Thomas, Mr. Ellis didn’t appear to register his disapproval. 

“My mother’s certainly happy about it,” he said, smile as pleasant as ever. 

“Of course she is…” Mrs. Hughes said. “You’ll have time to see her?”

“I’ll have some time off when Mr. Miller gets here, so that’s first on the list.”

“Oh, that’s nice…”

She looked over at Thomas, as if expecting him to agree with her. He granted her a non-committal nod, and she frowned in a way that told him he hadn’t heard the end of it. 

“Well, as I said, it was kind of you to bring it back—”

“—it’s lucky you heard that it was missing,” Thomas interjected lightly. “Else you might have pocketed it.” 

Mrs. Hughes knew him too well: “Mr. Barrow!”

Mr. Ellis didn’t look at all bothered, merely cracking another smile in Thomas’s direction. 

“Well, I thought someone’d misplaced their pocket money at first,” he said. “I went to Mrs. Bates—Anna, I should say—first. She seemed likely to find out who. I didn’t realize it was so important, so I’m glad it’s been found.”

An easy enough story to verify...and Thomas intended to do just that. He’d done it himself more than once—made up a story anyone might realize wasn’t true—and it nearly always worked because people didn’t check the facts. 

But Florence declared that she “hadn’t managed to get a word out around him at all, Mr. Barrow, he’s just so—” 

“—thank you, Florence,” Thomas said, feeling suddenly ridiculous for having asked at all. 

Even still, it was an odd coincidence...and even odder that Mr. Ellis didn’t hold Thomas’s suspicions against him. He spoke with him after supper as cordially as anyone ever had, and Thomas had little choice but to follow along. 

He was... _ something,  _ that was for certain. Thomas couldn’t quite figure out what. 

In the meantime, he couldn’t say he minded having someone to talk to who could keep up—and someone who didn’t know every sorry detail about him.

Someone whose conversations with Thomas, judging by the glances he received, were already garnering envy. Unfounded—the man would talk to anyone who gave him half a chance—but not unwelcome. 

They all could do with some reminding that Thomas wasn’t just this house, this job...that people outside of it saw him and cared to see more. 

It made him easily flattered, perhaps, but Mr. Ellis hadn’t yet given him a reason to regret it. 

Anyway, he’d be gone in a few days’ time, so what was the harm in indulging in a little flattery, so long as Thomas remembered what it was? 

* * *

The stars were just beginning to come out—Richard searched for a familiar pattern among them, hands tucked restlessly in his pockets. 

That he was even considering asking Mr. Barrow to take some time off with him was reckless. Reckless and without much reward. Even if Richard thought that he’d noticed something, even if he  _ wanted _ to have noticed it...where was the guarantee? Where was the promise of success? 

There was no harm in asking—except for the times when there were, the times when men were on guard or had heard a rumor or simply thought they’d make a joke of it. 

Mr. Barrow was certainly on guard—he’d come near accusing Richard outright of theft on the first night. The last thing Richard needed was trouble with a household’s butler. 

But if he was right...if he was lucky...Richard pulled his head back further, almost to the point of discomfort. 

He could be careful. He trusted himself to be careful. He’d gotten this far in life without much trouble, hadn’t he? 

And Mr. Barrow was seeming more and more like someone worth a bit of trouble. 

* * *

Thomas sat up straight when Mr. Ellis came through the open doorway to the butler’s pantry. 

“Only saying goodnight,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Thomas couldn’t think of a visiting valet who had done the same, and none of them would have looked nearly so happy to do so. 

“Goodnight, then,” he said, trying and failing to sound as if it were usual. 

Mr. Ellis smiled, stepping further into the room. He hesitated, holding a question on the tip of his tongue for longer than Thomas felt was strictly necessary. 

“I shouldn’t ask—” he said, “but I was in the library—”

“—doing what?” Thomas said, not very sternly, but it was enough to make Mr. Ellis’s shoulders straighten.

“I always try and get a look in,” he said. “Bad habit, Mr. Barrow, and one I’m sure I’ll pay for one of these days. But I wondered...would they let me sign something out, while I’m here?”

Thomas shrugged, somewhat baffled by the question. 

“I don’t see why not.” As far as he knew, there wasn’t any  _ rule _ against it—though that might have been due to the fact that no visiting staff had ever had the nerve to ask. 

Mr. Carson would have said ‘no’ outright—but Mr. Carson wasn’t the butler anymore, was he? And Thomas supposed the King’s valet’s signature was as good a promise as a kitchen maid’s. 

“Anything in particular you’re wanting to take out?” he asked. What sort of books did a man like him read, anyway? 

“There is,” Mr. Ellis said, lips twitching at the corners in a way that made Thomas’s heart jump. He paused just long enough for an absurd thought to cross Thomas’s mind, warming his cheeks and making him extremely grateful when Mr. Ellis looked off to the side and added: 

“Except I’m worried it’s ambitious, given the time.”

Thomas glanced over at the lamp on his table. 

“Surely you could guess?”

“I try to, Mr. Barrow. But I’m not very good at it.” 

His eyes met Thomas’s again, and there was something there, Thomas wasn’t imagining it...was he? 

He leaned forward in his chair. 

“So you leave a trail of unfinished books across Yorkshire?”

“Can’t know if the books are finished or not, Mr. Barrow, without reading them all the way through,” Mr. Ellis replied, and Thomas laughed without wondering whether it was really funny. It was the way he said it, the way he hardly seemed to care if it came off as a joke or not. 

He  _ did  _ seem to like it when Thomas treated it as one, his smile widening, eyes focusing in on Thomas’s face. 

“Anyway, I’m not sure I’ll find this one anywhere else,” he added. 

Thomas blinked. 

“I doubt that,” he managed. “What’s it called?”

Even a smart answer might give him a better idea of what he meant by it all—because he meant  _ something _ by it, Thomas had little doubt of that anymore…

But whatever Mr. Ellis’s answer would have been was lost when Miss Baxter entered the room, startling them both. 

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Though she didn’t look it...

“It’s no trouble,” Mr. Ellis said. “I’m just off to bed.”

“Goodnight,” she called after him as he passed—moving quicker than he usually did, Thomas thought. She turned to Thomas expectantly, and he sighed. 

“If you’re here to ask about Mr. Molesley, I’ve decided you’ll have to be the one to tell him the bad news,” he said, returning to the papers on his desk. 

“Surely they’ll let the rest of you play some part in it?” 

He looked up at her knowingly. “Is that what it sounded like to you?” 

He was getting dangerously close to actually feeling sorry for Mr. Molesley—not over the visit so much, it was his own fault for caring at all when he wasn’t even in service and had no business begging to serve anyone ever again—but he wasn’t a bad man, really.

And he had other reasons to hang around Downton, didn’t he?

“I’ll warn him,” Baxter said. “But since he has the time off, he might as well come.” 

Thomas smirked. 

“He can take you to the parade, at any rate,” he teased. Maybe something would finally happen...they’d been waiting long enough. 

“You’re getting on well with Mr. Ellis,” she replied—and even her mild tone couldn’t mask the suggestion in it. 

Though he’d felt certain of the same thing only a moment before, Thomas shrugged. 

“I think he makes it his business to get along with people.” 

She smiled. “You talk as if there’s something wrong in that.”

“It is when you’re lying.” 

Now that Mr. Ellis was out of the room, it was easier to remember what he’d done since arriving—play a part, make everyone comfortable...it was obvious, really, once Thomas caught the pattern. 

“What reason would he have to lie?”

She was committed to pretending she didn’t understand how the world worked—Thomas had accepted it as a part of her disposition, and he held none of her optimism against her.

Even still, she was often wrong in it, or at least willfully blind to the possibility that she  _ might _ be wrong. 

“Well, I am the butler of the house, and his own employer’s gone,” Thomas explained. “So if I want to cause trouble for him, I expect I could and he knows it.”

She considered the words only briefly before saying: 

“I should think it would be simpler to stay out of your hair.”

That was her trouble: believing everyone did the simplest, sanest, kindest thing, when many did the opposite. Thomas wouldn’t put it beyond anyone to try and appease the person in charge however they knew how. He’d done it himself plenty of times. 

And why would Mr. Ellis be any different?

“I’m going up,” he said, standing up suddenly, not meeting Baxter’s eye. 

“Don’t be cross with me…” she said, the smile drifting off her face. 

“I’m not cross with anyone,” Thomas said gruffly. He stopped in the doorway, turning his head halfway towards her. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she said, sounding downcast. 

He’d make it up with her in the morning. 


	2. Chapter 2

Richard slowed on the stairs to better hear the maids. They’d stopped their chatter as he passed—more as an opportunity to hear a ‘good morning’ than out of a sense of privacy—but there was gossip afoot, and Richard didn’t intend to let the opportunity go to waste. 

“That’s what he said, that Mr. Carson’s the butler until after they’ve gone—” said Henrietta. 

“—but did _Mr. Barrow_ say so?” said Florence. “I mean, maybe they’re both the butler—”

“—Mr. Barrow said he wouldn’t do it.” 

“To His Lordship and everyone?”

“That’s what Albert said—”

Another butler...now there’d really be a surplus of cooks in the kitchen...Richard paused at the landing, considering the weight of the new information. In one sense, it didn’t matter at all—Mr. Wilson would push this Mr. Carson to the side just as he pushed everyone else. 

But if Lord Grantham were bringing in someone especially, it might mean a bit of a scuffle...something Richard had no mind to find himself unprepared for. 

Whatever he’d told Mr. Barrow, Richard hadn’t really been in the library at all—he left the wandering to Miss Lawton, and she in turn left the dawdling to him. But when a butler who was decidedly _not_ Mr. Barrow strode into the library, Richard followed at a distance. 

The best way to find out the measure of someone in charge was to be caught doing something that wasn’t _exactly_ wrong, but might provoke questions. Life was a game of questions and answers, made all the more entertaining by the fact that hardly anyone told the truth.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in here,” Richard said, announcing himself to the straight, stiff back in front of him. 

The older man turned on his heel—Mr. Carson had the aura of a typical butler that couldn’t be found hanging around Mr. Barrow. At once flummoxed and severe, he blustered at Richard’s presence. 

“Who are you?” he said, quite rudely. Though being a butler still sat in his bones, he was more recently practiced, Richard suspected, in being an aging fellow in a sleepy village. 

Richard blinked, affecting an air of confusion. 

“Mr. Ellis…Mr. Carson.”

Hearing his name startled him. 

“Ah, yes,” he said, clearing his throat. “Of course. Mr. Ellis. Can I help you?”

“No, I’ve been well taken care of,” Richard said. “Only Mr. Barrow said I might borrow something, just for the visit.”

Mr. Carson had bristled the moment the words ‘Mr. Barrow’ left Richard’s lips—that was the sort of thing you had to notice, in order to tell true answers from false. 

Not that Mr. Carson was doing a good job of hiding it...

“Did he?” he drawled, hands tight behind his back. “Did he indeed?” 

“If there’s something wrong in it, Mr. Carson?”

He hesitated. Clearly, he believed that there was...but he looked determined to find a way to say so without giving the appearance of disorder. 

“Not wrong, particularly…” he said. “Only it isn’t really for Mr. Barrow to lend out His Lordship’s possessions.” 

Mr. Carson’s lip curled as he said it—he couldn’t help himself, it seemed. Richard hardly blamed Mr. Barrow for refusing to work with someone whose contempt rolled so easily off the tongue. 

“Of course; I wasn’t thinking,” Richard said, tone dripping with good nature. “We have to go along differently in our line of service...there being so many of us. It wouldn’t work, hopping all the way up the chain for every little thing, you see...but in a smaller house, I understand if you do it differently; it makes perfect sense now that you point it out—”

“—I wouldn’t say we do it _differently,_ Mr. Ellis.” Mr. Carson’s face had gone red; he tried to hide it with a lifted chin. “But visiting staff don’t generally ask. I assume Mr. Barrow spoke out of generosity towards a guest.”

It pained Mr. Carson to say it, but there was something else in the words, too. Or perhaps something in the way Mr. Carson was eyeing him. 

_Generosity_ was a funny word—a word people liked to use for all kinds of things. Too often, the word “generous” was anything but. 

He wouldn’t get anything more from Mr. Carson, however. Certainly nothing worth the cost of irritating him further. 

“As has everyone else since I’ve been here,” Richard said, before turning to leave.

He’d learned the man wouldn’t be a match for Mr. Wilson. Richard wondered if he’d even be a match for his own staff…

Besides, he had a question he still needed to ask Mr. Barrow. 

* * *

Mr. Ellis looked up from his book (his own book, nothing from His Lordship’s library...he’d claimed Mr. Carson had spooked him, though Thomas didn’t believe for a moment that Mr. Ellis could be so easily spooked by anyone, much less Carson). 

“Of course, we’re all entitled to our own opinions about a place...” he said, picking up a thread of conversation Thomas thought they had dropped. Why Mr. Ellis wanted him to go to York was beyond Thomas...though he wasn’t exactly sorry that he’d brought it up again. 

He’d learned Thomas wasn’t the butler—that he wasn’t anything at all, for the time being—and he’d asked him anyway. 

It was possible, Thomas had to concede, that he’d been just a bit too eager to assign ulterior motives...

“Do you ever finish a page, or is the book just for show?” Thomas retorted, hardly looking up from his puzzle. 

Mr. Ellis turned pointedly back to his book, scanning all the way to the bottom of the page before emphatically turning to the next one. 

Thomas, smiling, ignored him, even as he felt Mr. Ellis’s eyes on him—not prying, exactly. Nothing so harsh as that. But observant, certainly. Intentional, in the same way he’d turned the page. 

“It’s ‘austere,’” he said, grinning when Thomas looked up. He gestured to the newspaper. “Three across.”

Thomas glanced down—he was right, though Thomas would have gotten it himself in time...

“I knew tha—”

But Mr. Ellis had gone back to his book, only half-turning his head at Thomas’s protests, putting a finger to his lips before pointing it down at the page. 

Thomas obeyed and went back to his crossword...though he hoped that Mr. Ellis might badger him again about York. 

It could be fun, going with him. 

* * *

“Who’s going to York?” Elsie poked her head in the boot room, relieved to find only her own staff inside. She needed a break from Mrs. Webb, from the new maids, from the whole notion of the royal visit. 

They couldn’t leave soon enough as far as she was concerned…

Miss Baxter and Anna exchanged a look. 

“Mr. Barrow is,” Baxter said. “With Mr. Ellis.”

Elsie turned to Thomas, whose eyes were fixed on sorting through an already well-ordered box.. 

“Oh?” 

He frowned. “I don’t remember saying that,” he said, throwing a pointed look at Baxter. 

“But you are, aren’t you?” Anna interjected—Thomas looked surprised at it. “There’s no reason for you to sit about here.”

“And he likes you,” Baxter said. 

“He likes everyone,” Thomas insisted, almost before Baxter’s mouth had closed. “Or pretends to.”

But he didn’t seem to believe his own insinuation—there was a smile on his face he couldn’t mask. 

“So he’s friendly,” Anna shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

He looked between them, fumbling for another excuse. 

“Even if I did go, what would I do? Sit at his mother’s house?”

“You could do worse,” Elsie said. He had to stop talking himself out of happiness—she knew why he did it, but he had to stop it if he were ever to build something past what Downton had to offer. Something of his own. 

“What does that mean?” 

“What I said.”

Thomas blinked. 

“You’re very frustrating, you know that?”

Elsie laughed. “So says the pot…”

* * *

The temporary salve of Mr. Carson’s fall from grace was fading fast, and Thomas was back to feeling well and truly neglected. All the rest of them were complaining about their jobs being taken, but at least they’d been taken at the King’s request, and not Lady Mary’s…

It had been her idea and not His Lordship’s; Mr. Bates had all but told him so. If he’d said it to make him feel better, it hadn’t really worked (no surprise there, making people feel better was one of the things Mr. Bates was worst at, which he suspected was why he tried it so often with Thomas). 

Mrs. Hughes could grumble about Mrs. Webb, and Albert would resent being passed over for proper footmen, but what was Thomas supposed to do? Complain about poor Mr. Carson, who sat with his vegetable garden all day, just waiting for a chance to come back to the house he’d clearly wanted to die in? 

People would call him bitter for it, Thomas supposed. Ungrateful, ungenerous...he’d earned some goodwill after a year and half of being the butler, but not that much. 

Better to avoid everyone altogether, lest he say something they’d make him regret. 

Mr. Ellis knocked before entering, though Thomas could hardly hear it over the rain on the roof. 

“They’re looking for you, to help put up the chairs for the parade.” He smiled at Thomas’s sigh, closing the door behind him. 

“Of course they are…” Because now he had something they couldn’t do without...something even Lady Mary couldn’t take away from him. 

“It’s like I said—you’re better off not having anything to do with the whole business. Even if you weren’t coming with me tomorrow.”

Thomas couldn’t hold his gaze—it was too sincere...or else it wanted to seem sincere. Everyone seemed to think he was the former, and maybe he was. Thomas had never been a good judge of it…

But with so little time, was it worth it to risk being wrong? 

“You must have better things to do than have me tagging along.”

This time, Mr. Ellis looked truly stung, at least for a moment. Maybe it was the rain, or perhaps the stillness of the room. The setting itself, even--Thomas sitting in a chair that would wobble if he sat too far back, Mr. Ellis standing in front of a cracked open door, one hand fiddling with his buttons again. 

“Can’t think of one.” He looked away at the same time Thomas did. “Do you want to come?”

 _Of course I do,_ Thomas thought. Mr. Ellis was clever and handsome and _interesting._ Something different, something bright. 

Someone who seemed hurt by Thomas’s continued avoidance of the question. 

There was a time where that wouldn’t have mattered so much—let him be uncomfortable, Thomas would have reasoned. _If he feels rejected, that’s not my fault. Not when I need to protect myself._

He’d learned enough to know that it’d come back to bite him if he didn’t at least try and be fair. 

“I just don’t want to be in the way,” he said lightly.

“I wouldn’t ask you to be.” Mr. Ellis was smiling again—softer than any time in Thomas’s memory. Relieved, even. “Just to admit you were wrong when you have a good time.”

* * *

The house was too large to ever be described as noisy, except for during very large parties. What _ could _ be heard—if someone was used to the rhythms of the house—was a certain hum that accompanied the family’s return. Normally, Thomas was in the midst of it, and it was more difficult to hear. 

But up on the balcony, accompanied by a babbling Miss Caroline, he heard it easily enough. It almost made him wish he’d come to the parade after all. 

Almost. 

“We’ll have to get you back,” he said cheerfully to his companion—who was chewing on a wooden horse that Thomas didn’t think he could wrest from her grip if he tried. 

The day nursery was buzzing. Already the happiest place in the house on an ordinary day, the parade had turned it livelier than ever. 

“What’s all this?” Thomas handed Miss Caroline off, surveying the three children who bounced about the room with the energy of a dozen. 

Miss Sybbie tugged on his hand. “Look what Marigold learned to do!” 

Thomas had tried and failed many times to explain to Miss Sybbie that shouting “look at Marigold” was the easiest way to ensure that she stopped doing anything at all. She’d always been a quiet little thing, quite content to follow the lead of the older children. 

Perhaps having Brancaster all to herself was changing things, for she piped up with a clear and proud whistle. 

“My goodness…” Thomas put his hands behind his back, delighted by how simple it was to bring a grin to the girl’s face. “Where did you learn to do that?” 

But the words still didn’t come as easily as the whistle had, and Miss Marigold looked to her companions for help. “Uhm…”

“—well, it was at the parade, wasn’t it?” Master George said kindly, as he said most everything, standing next to Miss Marigold in encouragement. She nodded. 

“They were giving lessons?” Thomas said. “Perhaps I should have gone; only it doesn’t sound like any parade _I’ve_ ever been to.”

They laughed, and in the space of time where it filled the room, Thomas didn’t feel at all sorry for where he’d landed in life. 

“No, Mr. Barrow,” Miss Sybbie said, charmingly impatient as ever. “It was Mr. Ellis who showed her!” 

She said the name as if she’d known it all her life—she’d always been that way, and Thomas hoped very much that she always would be. No one frightened her, nothing stood in her way. He wondered whether she’d marched right up to the King’s valet and asked him his name, or if she’d perhaps mistaken him for someone else, only to realize her error and boldly ask, “--but who are  _ you?” _

Whatever had happened, Thomas could bet that Mr. Ellis had taken it in stride and good humor. 

“Of course he did…” 

The knowledge sat in his back pocket until he came across Mr. Ellis in the servants’ hall—strangely deserted for the time of day. When Mr. Ellis smiled at his approach, Thomas looked for and failed to find the doubt that he’d been carrying for the past two days. In fact, he felt strangely warm towards him. 

“The nanny won’t thank you for teaching them to whistle,” he said. Mr. Ellis appeared surprised, at first, then almost flattered. 

“I only taught the one—and she’s a visitor, like me.”

As if the three of them weren’t driving Nanny to pieces upstairs...if Thomas were very cynical, he’d think Mr. Ellis had done it on purpose. 

For better or for worse, he was getting softer all the time, and so only wished he might have seen it all. 

“Surprised you could get her to talk to you,” Thomas said. “She’s not too fond of strangers.” 

“Most people aren’t; luckily, I have some practice in changing their minds.” Mr. Ellis’s smile widened. “Are you coming with me, then?” 

_ I like it when he does that, _ Thomas let himself realize. _ I like it when he smiles at me, when he talks to me, when he asks me places.  _

And why shouldn’t he do the things he liked? What was he helping, worrying that they’d turn sour before he could enjoy them, when he _ was _ enjoying them, now? 

“I think I would,” he said. “But can we stop in the village first? I have an errand.”

Mr. Ellis was sharp—he caught the glint in Thomas’s eye. 

“This doesn’t have something to do with all of you sneaking off to the wine cellar, does it?” 

“It might.” Thomas smirked. What a relief to talk to someone who could keep up... Mr. Ellis might even—

“—you can help, if you’d like,” Thomas added, unafraid of refusal. 

Mr. Ellis looked about before answering. 

“Now, Mr. Barrow, are you planning on getting us into trouble?” Said in such a way that Thomas wasn’t sure what answer Mr. Ellis would rather hear. 

“I wouldn’t say I was  _ planning _ on it.” 

That seemed to do the trick.


	3. Chapter 3

It was his own fault for leaving Mr. Barrow on his own so long...leaving him in a pub and not expecting another man to notice what he’d  _ known,  _ what he’d seen from the first night and had sat on out of nerves, out of cowardice. 

He’d taken too long...but if he was quick about this part, Mr. Barrow might not have to pay too high of a price. 

“Barrow, you said?” The sergeant’s eyes were narrowed—he followed the card back into Richard’s pocket, as if he might still find proof that it wasn’t what it pretended to be. 

“That’s right, Sergeant.” Richard’s heart thudded in his chest, and he smiled all the wider to make up for it. “Thomas Barrow—let’s hope he can still answer to his name.”

He laughed for an instant, then stopped himself, biting down on his tongue and wincing. 

The sergeant nodded—he wasn’t amused in the slightest. He beckoned over another officer. 

“Hooper—” he muttered something to him before looking back at Richard. “It’ll be a few minutes.”

Richard nodded. His mouth tasted like metal. “I’ll be outside. Thank you very much, Sergeant. He’ll be sorry enough tomorrow morning, I can assure you.”

“Let’s hope so.”

The sergeant wasn’t charmed, but he didn’t need to be—only convinced. Richard wished he’d realized that sooner. He pressed his tongue against the top of his mouth, trying to staunch the bleeding. 

_ Fitting, really, _ he thought, taking a shuddering breath of the night air, feeling it sting against the wound. 

He had to stop talking like it didn’t matter, and he’d have to do it quick. 

* * *

He wouldn’t have thought Mr. Barrow’s eyes could get any wider. 

“You really didn’t know a thing about it?” he said, incredulous. 

“I hardly believe it now…” Richard said. On the continent...London, even. York? Even Richard didn’t strive to such optimism as _ that. _

Mr. Barrow—who looked almost in one piece, thank goodness—seemed ready to laugh in his face. 

He wasn’t sorry for that, after everything that had happened. 

“What?” he said, laughing for him. 

“Then what were you talking about?” Mr. Barrow said. “Where were you going to take me?”

It almost hurt, hearing him say it...there was a time where Richard might have pretended, might have said, “no, of course I meant there, Mr. Barrow, only you beat me to the surprise.”

He couldn’t manage it tonight. Richard wondered if he’d ever manage it again. 

“You think I was as sure as all that?”

“Weren’t you?” 

Richard stayed staring out the front window. “I don’t know anymore. In a way, maybe.”

The words sat in the car with them. Richard wondered—was it better to pull over and give themselves a moment, or drive back as fast as they could before the nerves caught up?

“You didn’t say where,” Mr. Barrow said, finally. 

Richard didn’t know how he was doing it, if he was only in shock...but Mr. Barrow was smiling at him. Teasing him, with as much heart as he could muster. 

The least he could do was play along. 

“We’d have had a drink,” he said. “Then it would have all depended.”

Mr. Barrow didn’t need to ask on what. 

“Best case.” 

They were the furthest thing from that...Richard didn’t know if it would hold up, under the circumstances.

“I can show you,” he said. “If you’re up for it?”

Mr. Barrow didn’t look all too pleased with the reminder that he might not be. 

“You’re not getting out of it so easy as that.” 

* * *

Mr. Barrow looked over the edge of the footbridge.

“Have you taken to me to the same place every lad takes their sweetheart after school?” 

Richard stood beside him, clasping the railing. 

“You said best case,” he teased. “Anyway, this isn’t it, quite yet.”

On the other side of the bridge, a few strides off the path, was a groved area—a place where people who wanted still more privacy might take their sweethearts. It seemed built for it—a welcoming log that hadn’t stirred since Richard had first come across it, plenty of moonlight still able to spill through the rustling leaves. 

If Mr. Barrow was enchanted by it, he was trying hard to pretend otherwise. 

“And I’d have sat there, would I?” he said, gesturing to the log that Richard had already taken the right side of. 

“If I was lucky.”

That charmed him, at least—he couldn’t hide it in time. 

“Are you, usually?” he said, even as he sat down next to him. Closer than he needed to—close enough for Richard not to answer the question. 

“Now we could sit and talk for a while—”

“—nice place for talking—” 

“—and then we’d have to see.”

For a moment, he thought it would really happen just as he’d thought it might—Mr. Barrow locked eyes with him, and there was no wondering anymore about what sat behind them. He’d been too cautious, not allowing himself to believe it before—

—then Mr. Barrow looked away. 

“I almost didn’t come at all,” he said. “Figured that even if you were...like me...I was being taken in, somehow.”

“Taken in?” Richard sat back. “By me?”

He must not have done a very good job of sounding amused; Mr. Barrow nearly looked apologetic. 

“Well, you can’t say you aren’t…” Mr. Barrow looked down at his hands. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t.” Even though he did. 

Was he pretending, even now, by taking Mr. Barrow to a silly spot for children, rather than driving him back home to rest and recover? 

Except Mr. Barrow hadn’t wanted to go home...hadn’t wanted to sit in a pub for too long, even...he was a bit of showman, too, Richard suspected.

“It’s not that I blame you,” Mr. Barrow said. “I’d probably be the same, traveling all over.”

Richard raised his brow. “Would you, Mr. Barrow?” 

“Well…” Mr. Barrow looked about, embarrassed. “I just mean, you can’t be expected not to take your chances, when they come.”

Richard nodded. “So you’re worried that I’ve been putting something on?”

“No, not putting it on, exactly.” Mr. Barrow looked up at the sky. Maybe the moonlight did help, more than an echoing kitchen and a cup of tea would have. “But you’ll take it off when you go, and I don’t expect more than that. After what you did for me, I—I’ll always be grateful for it.”

For all his guardedness, for all his sharpness, Mr. Barrow was doing a much better job of telling the truth than he was...Richard faced the sky, closing his eyes for a pause, worried for an instant about what it looked like to Mr. Barrow before pushing the instinct down. 

It didn’t matter what it looked like, if it was true. 

Some people had dreams that told them the truth because it was in their bones to tell it—how could it do otherwise, even in sleep? 

But people like him—people who told tales—would also do the same in their sleep. And no matter how pretty they were, how fantastic, they were only tales. 

Mr. Barrow could see it, better than anyone had before. And he was being generous about it—really and truly generous—when he had no reason to be. 

_ Give him a reason, _ Richard thought.  _ You’re good at that.  _

_ But make it the truth.  _

He took a breath, shoulders falling. “When I was in there—in the station...I didn’t just show them my card.”

There was an uncomfortable silence that Mr. Barrow tried to fill: 

“Well, you couldn’t have just  _ handed them a card—” _

“—no, just listen. Please.” Mr. Barrow obeyed, eyes wide. “I started off with a different...I thought I could manage it without that. Because I was worried that it might go wrong.”

“‘Course you were,” Mr. Barrow said quietly, before closing his mouth tighter than before. 

“But I said things I didn’t mean, things that weren’t true,” Richard stared up at the sky. “About what had happened, about how I felt about it. About how  _ you  _ felt about it.”

“Oh.”

Whether he was imagining something better or worse than the truth, it would have to remain that way, for Richard had very nearly reached the end of what he could bring himself to explain. 

“I won’t repeat it,” he said. “I don’t think I could. All of it...it came up with a struggle, like it was clawing to stay inside. I can still feel the marks.”

Again, Mr. Barrow moved to fill the silence before it had settled. 

“I’m sorry you—”

“—I’m not sorry,” Richard said—surprised as he said it to find that it was true. True enough, anyway. What he really meant was—

“—I’d do it again,” he continued. “That’s what I mean. I’d do it again, so I could make sure you came home safe and sound. And if it troubles me to have said it, it’s nothing compared to that.”

Mr. Barrow looked away rather sharply, though he let Richard’s hand sit atop of his own. 

“Then to sit here, with you…” Richard shook his head. “I couldn’t slip this off, even if I wanted to. And I don’t.”

Mr. Barrow still wasn’t looking at him, and when he spoke, his voice was watery. 

“Unusual, for you, I’ll bet,” he said, valiantly attempting to maintain his sharpness. It wasn’t a half-bad attempt, either...Richard grinned, squeezing his hand tighter, using it as an anchor to edge closer. 

His heart was still pounding in his chest. “There’s plenty you don’t know about me—”

“—I know too much about you, that’s the trouble.” Mr. Barrow turned to him, finally—pale in the moonlight, but eyes as bright as Richard had seen them. 

What was it, that made people like them shine all the brighter for the world trying to hide them away, to dull them through disuse? 

“We’re something alike, you and me,” Richard said, fonder than ever of Mr. Barrow’s lifted chin, his eyes that said more than he probably wanted them to. “But I’m not always trying to sell something, Mr. Barrow. And neither are you, I can tell that…”

“There’d be nothing wrong in it if you were,” Mr. Barrow said, “just as long as you had something to sell.” 

The rest of the night—the rest of the world—felt so far away that Richard half believed he was dreaming already. It didn’t feel fantastic, or even especially beautiful (the wind was picking up, which was a shame, and the moon wasn’t lending as much light as he’d hoped). 

But it was true, and that was enough. 

“Oh, I can assure you, I do…” 


	4. Chapter 4

“What is that?”

Thomas jumped at Mrs. Hughes’s entrance into the butler’s pantry.

“Nothing,” he said, tucking the fob into his pocket. Mrs. Hughes’s eyes followed it, taking their time coming back to Thomas’s face. 

“How was your time off?” she said, suggestion dripping in the words. 

“Illuminating,” Thomas said, sapped of all impulse to hide something she already knew. He was happy, and why should he pretend otherwise? 

“And Mr. Ellis?”

“I think you were right.” Thomas was in a good enough humor to almost enjoy how pleased she looked to hear it. “We are friends. Or I hope we are.”

Mrs. Hughes nodded. 

“And he gave you…whatever that is in your pocket that I’m not allowed to see?”

Thomas hesitated. The gift had been private for all of two minutes, and he’d liked those two minutes very much. More than was probably reasonable. 

But privacy was easily tarnished, turning into something much less pleasant. He’d have enough of it without hiding from Mrs. Hughes. 

“He’s too sentimental, you know…” he said, taking it back out of his pocket and holding it out to her. She stepped closer, marveling at it. “I learned that.”

She laughed.

“So says the—”

“—alright,” Thomas looked down at it, running his thumb fondly along the edge. “You don’t have to say it…”

“Mr. Barrow?” Albert had poked his head in, and Thomas once again hastened to pocket the fob. 

“Yes, Albert?” he said, too loudly. 

Albert looked between him and Mrs. Hughes—he was a clever lad, he’d spotted something amiss. 

He was also—thankfully—learning a bit of discretion. 

“Are you the butler again?” he asked. 

Thomas blinked—he’d hardly thought of it all morning. 

“I don’t know.”

“He is,” Mrs. Hughes assured Albert, before turning to Thomas. “You  _ are.” _

Quite insistent...anyone might think Mrs. Hughes had decided she didn’t like having her husband come to work with her again…

Thomas tried very hard not to be pleased at the thought, and failed spectacularly.

He shrugged, as if that might hide his smirk. “His Lordship may not want—”

“—Mr. Bates says…” Albert began, confidently at first before trailing off when he’d gotten the attention he’d asked for. “...well, Mr. Bates says His Lordship thought you were brilliant, storming off.”

Mrs. Hughes frowned. “Now, Albert, I doubt His Lordship put it like that, exactly—”

“—I didn’t  _ storm off,”  _ Thomas bristled.

Albert—who clearly disagreed with both of them—pressed his lips together and glanced conspicuously about the room. 

Thomas sighed. “What is it, Albert?”

He brightened. “There’s a bird flew in Larry’s room again—can I catch it?”

Thomas couldn’t find it in himself to be appropriately irritated, though he put on his best impression of it, thinking of Richard as he did. 

“You certainly can’t,” he said.

Albert smiled anyway. 

“Did you like having a day off, Mr. Barrow?” he said, following him up the stairs. 

“I did. How did you like serving?”

“Oh, I liked it well enough,” Albert said brightly, “Mr. Molesley—”

Against his better judgment, Thomas let him tell the story—he was only half-listening, anyway, thinking of Richard off to the station, perhaps reaching into his pocket only to find that something was missing...forgetting for a moment where he left it, and feeling all the fonder about it when he remembered…

“—do you think that kind of thing really happens all that often, Mr. Barrow?”

“No, Albert, I don’t.” 


End file.
